Newbery Winner 1972: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

I can’t remember the first time I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. In elementary school, I’m sure; my copy still bears an elementary-school version of my signature.

I was profoundly disappointed this time around. It was, of sorts, a surprise breakup and I’m still dealing with the emotional fallout. NIMH (abbreviated from here on) has been a staple on my shelf.

At this point, I want to delineate between the story and the literary style. I do love the story. It’s clever and classic fantasy. I’ve tried to break down what caused the writing to fail for me.

Foreshadowing — by the end, the obvious foreshadowing grew tiresome. It seems O’Brien was ill-advised by an editor or friend to add some foreshadowing into the story. So he added one-liners a few pages before each significant event. They stick out like the obviously used-to-be-a-carport-now-a-den of many older homes.

For example, when Mrs. Frisby reads “The Plan of the Rats of NIMH,” she comments to herself that “NIMH” sounds far away, which leads her to speculate all manner of things regarding the rats that turn out to be, gasp, spot on. For all she know, NIMH could be an expletive or a brand of canned corn. Later, Nicodemus casually comments that “[n]ow that Jenner and his friends are gone, we have seven [rooms] empty”. Mrs. Frisby, who has been listening to a story that has been, up to this point, primarily about the friendship and teamwork of Nicodemus and Jenner, doesn’t even blink at this announcement. A few pages later we learn that, gasp, Jenner and his friends left in opposition to The Plan. Foreshadowing = forced, unoriginal and obvious.

Narrator Voice — O’Brien has to navigate the tricky waters of an animal story, so he wisely chooses to write in third-person omniscient. Trying to limit oneself to what Mrs. Frisby can know and observe would be a tall order indeed. So the characters in NIMH seem to have a pretty good understanding of the world in general, from farming to human speech. But the description of Mrs. Frisby being caught by the youngest Fitzgibbon boy threw everything off kilter. “The ceiling, which had somehow become curved, was filled with little round moons," describes Mrs. Frisby being caught by an up-turned colander. It was a rare descent into how a mouse would experience such a situation, but it messed with the narrator’s voice and the rest of the story jerked around, like a wooden rollercoaster.

Round, Static Characters — No one changes. Barring a few tugs at my heart, NIMH is emotionally anemic. Even the moral issue of stealing from Farmer Fitzgibbon is settled prior to the story beginning so it’s really not a change. Some ambivalence is shown in the line, “in order to stop stealing we would, for a while, have to steal more than ever,” but it’s left hanging and not dealt with.

The section that got my ire up though, was when Mrs. Frisby learns the truth about her husband — that he had near-human intelligence, unnatural long life and snuck out at night to freelance for the rats until he was killed on the job. What?! I got really angry reading this. Justin the rat says, “We thought about telling you....” But well, that would have been really awkward you can almost hear him say to himself. So they didn't tell her... and she just takes it. Where’s the anger? Where’s the justified rage? Mrs. Frisby just sniffs stoically and goes on with life. Where’s the distrust? If they didn’t tell her about her husband Jonathan, what might they not be telling her now? Some honest emotional conflict could have taken the story to new heights.

I’m not pooh-poohing the whole story. I do enjoy the repeated line, “We all help one another against the cat,” repeated by Mrs. Frisby and the Owl. I like Mrs. Frisby’s sickly son, Timothy and the understated, yet strong role he plays. I like how Jonathan and Mrs. Frisby book-end the story of the rats when Nicodemus says, “Just as your husband did once, you have saved us from a disaster.”

And I do appreciate how NIMH deals honestly with death as it affects the world of animals. Not in a glorified Redwall style, but as a cycle of life, more like Bambi. I think it’s an important truth, one that I too easily forget. Chicken comes from a store, right, not from the death of a living creature. Hear me, I’m not making an appeal for PETA. But honestly dealing with life and death on earth does bring into focus the realities of caring for the earth.

My general impression in the end is that, well, this is something I could write. It felt unpolished, loose and plodding at times. So I’m left with some questions. Should I chalk it all up to 37 years of literary evolution? I don’t think so. Writing has not changed so much in four decades such that Holes has a profound literary advantage over NIMH. Am I so desensitized by modern entertainment culture that I need “more” from a book? No, because I fault the literary skill, not the storyline. Perhaps I am so familiar with the story that I’ve become a crotchety septuagenarian, acutely noticing every fault and imperfection of my mate?

Regardless, I’m sad. I’ll not enjoy this book nearly as much again.

Additional Resources

Wikipedia Summary

Warning: O'Brien's daughter wrote two follow-up books, Rasco and the Rats of NIMH and R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH. Do not read them. They are thinly veiled attempts to monetize the literary capital of a Newbery winner.

Next week: Winner of 1968 — From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg

Newbery Winner 1998: Holes

For some reason, I refused to read Holes for the longest time. I judged the book by its cover, or perhaps by Sachar's other works (notably his Wayside School series) that I just don't like. I was sure the state of American children’s literature had fell hard now that Holes was a Newbery.

Worse still, I own Holes, but I kept it separate from my other children’s books so they would not be negatively influenced. What a wonderful foreshadowing of the issues Sachar tackles.

In a moment of weakness a few months ago, I reluctantly read the first line, “There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.” I’ve read it (the entire book that is) three more times since.

Sachar takes on some big issues — injustice, racial tensions and equality.

The issue of race is introduced and driven primarily through the following six quotations (in chronological order):

“…it took Stanley a moment to notice that one kid was white and the other black.”

“Stanley was thankful that there were no racial problems.”

“On the lake they were all the same reddish brown color—the color of dirt.

“God will punish you.”

“It’s against the law for a Negro to kiss a white woman.”

“Same old story..... The white boy sits around while the black boy does all the work.”

Strategically, Sachar uses the back-story of Kate Barlow (white) and Sam the onion man (black), their love, his murder and her revenge to introduce racial tensions in a manner less affronting to the reader than a full-on attack (chapter 26).

The story of Kate and Sam seems, on the surface, fanciful, which allows Sachar to more starkly present the nasty racial prejudices that existed 100 years ago. The reader accepts it, thinks I’m so glad I’m enlightened, and WHAM! Sachar hits you in the face in the next chapter. The escalation occurs between Stanley (white) and his group (white, black and hispanic) as Zero (black) digs part of Stanley’s hole each day in exchange for reading lessons.

The second quote above, from chapter 19, I felt was rather awkward, inserted primarily to foreshadow the racial tensions later on. It felt forced and drew me out of the story, but only briefly.

From chapter 37 to the end, Sachar paints a powerful picture of equality and as Stanley (white) and Zero (black) struggle together for survival and ultimately triumph over the evil at Camp Green Lake.

Sachar neatly stitches together the back-story and Stanley and Zero’s story with the line, “the great-great-grandson of Elya Yelnats carried the great-great-great-grandson of Madame Zeroni up the mountain.”

Favorite lines

“This isn’t a girl-scout camp.” — Mr. Sir

“Stanley raised and lowered one shoulder.”

“His [Stanley’s] cap was stained with blood from his hands. He felt like he was digging his own grave.”

“That’s just what it is.” — Zero

Additional Resources

Wikipedia Summary

Buy Small Steps -- followup to Holes

Next week: Winner of 1972 — Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brien

Newbery Winner 1994: The Giver

I first read Lowry's The Giver about a decade ago in a Children's Literature class during my undergraduate studies. I've read it dozens of times since. It ranks high on my list of powerful, tantalizing works of children's literature. Perhaps that speaks critically of the breadth of my reading. Nevertheless, it is my first reviewed Newbery.

A quick note on my plan for these reviews; I won’t be summarizing the books; I will assume you have either read the book or will check out the resources listed at the end to get a summary. Also, this will not be a formal literary critique; rather a shotgun blast of what moved me.

On to the book….

First lines are determinative. When I open a book, I am physically giddy at reading the first sentence. A powerful first line starts the car and helps me drive through rough spots to the end of the book; a weak line, however, stalls my progress. A long-standing favorite first comes from C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Stubbs,
and he almost deserved it.”

With those simple words, “he almost deserved it” Lewis foreshadows everything about Eustace Clarence Stubbs that you come to understand through the subsequent pages.

Lowry does the same in The Giver.

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”

Why is Jonas frightened of December? From the get-go, Lowry presents Jonas as a wordsmith who is always looking for just the right way to describe something. Perhaps I relate more than some because I am, as my wife can vouch, a cesspool of useless knowledge, especially with words.

I relate to the society’s emphasis on “precision of language” and Jonas’ own obsession with finding just the right word. Ironically, it is this “precision” that is the impetus for his gradual disillusionment of his society and slow-growing sight at the realities of the dystopian around him.

I want to dig further into the element of language because it is what I believe makes The Giver so powerful rather than dynamic action or characters; although it has both. Through the phenomena of “Sameness”, the community is insulated from truly experiencing pain, love, joy, sadness or any such emotion that makes us human, forming an emotional baseline for the story. The characters use many emotionally laden words like “angry,” “happy,” and “starving,” but they carry no meaning. I felt my own emotion leached the longer I spent in “Sameness”.

But when Jonas is selected to be the next Receiver of Memory, he begins to experience real emotions and we experience them as well. Jonas feels the exhilaration of a sled ride, the unconditional love of a true family, and the despair of dying on a battlefield — forgotten and damned.

For the first time in the book, real emotions are laid out before the reader, raw and unfiltered. Jonas has no culturally defined reaction to these events so he responds with unfiltered honesty. When I read those passages, my emotional Richter scale spiked. The banal baseline created in the first half of the book heightened these emotional plateaus in ways not achievable in most other books.

Lowry takes simple things like snow, hills and family and heightens them in such a way to deconstruct the foundations of Jonas’ society. In doing this, she tackles such controversial topics (especially in a 9-12 year old chapter book) like abortion, euthanasia and choice.

I really don’t want to get into this much, but Lowry’s book has made the banned books list every year since it has been published. I only suggest that, perhaps, the very people objecting to The Giver because of the “adult” issues it deals with and the way they are dealt with are themselves attempting modern-day “Sameness” in the same way as the Elders in The Giver did back and back and back....

I recommend you read Gathering Blue and The Messenger, which form a loose trilogy with The Giver.

Suggested Resources

SparkNotes

Wikipedia Summary

USA Today Article, 2001

Buy it - Amazon

Next week: Winner of 1999 — Holes, by Louis Sachar

John Newbery Medal Winner Reviews

Next week, I'm starting a series of reviews on the winners of the John Newbery Medal [cue teacher mode]. Since 1922, the Newbery Medal has been awarded to an author whose book is considered to be the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children in that year [exit teacher mode]. 

A holistic review of the Newbery winners, I think, will offer much insight to the current state of children's literature as well as reveal publishing trends over the past near-century. Whether this project will reveal more about the publishing industry, the reader, the author or [yikes] myself, I don't know.

Naturally, I'll start these reviews with my favorite titles, the ones I own and whose pages are well-worn from dozens of readings. From there, I'll work my way to the titles yet unfamiliar. I'm rather excited about this adventure.

With 87 Newbery medals awarded to date, I'm in this for the long haul. I'll post one review a week and would be thrilled with suggestions for my next review once I work through the familiar ground.

Oh, and these posts will contain spoilers; so I'll preview the next week's review to give you time to either read it or skip the post until you have.

Next week: Winner of 1994 — The Giver, by Lois Lowry